Eunice Nduati was certain of two things at the start of her career: She wanted to research how humans respond to infections that disproportionately affect Africa, and she wanted to do the work back home.

"In Europe, I would just be an additional person. But here, there was a chance to make a difference," said Eunice, an immunologist at the KEMRI Wellcome Trust Research Programme in Kilifi, Kenya.

Eunice likes to unravel the mysteries that drive the different ways our backgrounds—where we live, our genetic makeup, and exposure to other infections—influence our ability to fight off infections and respond to vaccines. The answers are important in ensuring vaccines are designed to be equally effective for everyone.

This is especially true for HIV, an infamously tricky pathogen that has confounded vaccine developers for over 40 years. Among the many challenges is the virus’s ability to mutate and evolve quickly, creating different subtypes of the virus seen around the world. These genetic variants require people to mount different immune responses, making it difficult to design a universal vaccine that can counter all the subtypes.

When she returned to Kenya after finishing her PhD in the UK and Germany, her first study looked at how infants born to HIV infected mothers but who were negative themselves responded to childhood vaccines. She found that by the time they were two years old, their immune systems, for the most part, were just as robust as infants who were not exposed to HIV.

Now, Eunice is part of the team that is working on a landmark HIV vaccine design approach, called germline targeting, in which scientists try to coax specific and rare types of B cells to make broadly neutralizing antibodies (bnAbs) that can protect people from the many HIV strains circulating around the world. The IAVI G003 Phase I trial, marked the first in-human HIV germline targeting trial to be conducted in Africa by African scientists. For Eunice, the trial was significant because it showed that difficult research can be done in Africa.

"There was a lot of skepticism around whether this can be done on the continent," because of the complexity the analysis required, said Eunice. "I’m really glad we were able to pull this through."

Eunice ran the endpoint analysis, which looked at whether cells with the correct characteristics were primed and could eventually be shepherded to secrete the desired broadly neutralizing antibodies. In other words, are scientists on the right path?

They are. What is more, the Phase I results in Africa aligned with another trial, IAVI G002, which was conducted on humans in North America. It’s still early but it showed that scientists are on track to laying the groundwork for a universal HIV vaccine.

"I would be very pleased if the work we are doing contributes to the design of an effective vaccine that can be used on the continent. I think on the science front that would be very exciting," said Eunice.